Jeff Perren had an interesting comment on my last post. Although I responded to it briefly in the comments section, I thought his remarks deserved fuller consideration here.

More in sorrow than in anger (I think), Jeff wrote:

Sigh... I've concluded you've abandoned any attempt at being fair to Rand or her philosophy.

After all, it's one thing to criticize Rand on the basis of youthful journal entries; she did write them, though one could argue whether you interpret her intentions correctly.

It's quite another to cherry-pick a mixed group -- mostly losers and lunatics, some who are attracted to what they believe is an alternative to what they perceive as an oppressive religion. After all, there certainly is some basis, historically and at present, to regard Christianity as (sometimes) oppressive.

Would you accept criticism of Christianity from such people? Would you accept, as reasonable much less valid, criticism of Christianity because some have used it to justify witch burning, etc?

You know quite well that Rand abhored all such attempts to use her philosophy to justify such outlandish views as those you report. Your attempt at balance is dish-water at best.

Through history there have been many sects formed as off-shoots from a philosopher's main adherents; everything from the neo-Platonists to Jim Jones and the latest moony-loonies. Should the base philosophy and it's author(s) be lumped in with them by association?

You have far better reasoning powers than this, so I have to conclude it's simply unjust.

As I indicated in my initial response, my purpose in writing the post was not to say that Ayn Rand was a Satanist or any such thing. That would be absurd. Instead, I found it interesting that there is apparently some overlap between Objectivism and Satanism. That is, some of the people attracted to Objectivist (I stress the word some) are also attracted to Satanism. Why would this be?

I think it is because both Objectivism and Satanism appeal, in some cases, to narcissistic adolescents nursing a power fantasy. In slightly different ways, the two movements allow the young convert to play out this power fantasy in his mind. The Objectivist newbie is enthralled with the image of himself and his friends as heroic figures who, like John Galt and his allies, stand by impassively as this world of fools destroys itself; then they will descend from the mountain to rebuild among the ruins. The Satanist newbie is ensorceled by the notion that he is part of a dangerous, rebellious, socially disreputable movement and will be privy to secrets unknown to the ordinary, mediocre people he despises. In both cases, the motif is adolescent rebellion against traditional standards (Rand liked to boast that she was seeking to overturn the moral tradition of two and a half thousand years) mixed with the heady intoxication of feeling like one of the "special" ones, the enlightened few, the secret heroes, as opposed to the gray mass of average people.

This was what interested me - the psychology behind some Objectivists' commitment to their movement, which is, I think, similar to the psychology of some Satanists.

In addition, I think there is value in studying the Church of Satan, even though it is at best a (partial) caricature of Objectivism. Sometimes caricatures help us to notice things we would otherwise overlook. I never noticed George W. Bush's big ears until cartoonists started drawing him. Similarly, if I am right about the adolescent power fantasy appeal in Rand's writings, then this appeal may be more obvious in the oddball offshoots of Objectivism than in Objectivism per se.

Some of these offshoots, in addition to the Church of Satan, are Transhumanism, Neo-Tech, "objectivist" Epicurianism, and New Utopia. The latter movement is dedicated to building a libertarian paradise from scratch in the middle of the ocean. It will be ruled over by the movement's leaders, Prince Lazarus and Princess Maureen. Does this sound like an adolescent power fantasy to you? It does to me.

The Transhumanists are interested in replacing the human body with an immortal android body. In the meantime, cryogenics may be used as a stopgap measure to ward off death. They envision a future in which no one will ever have to grow old. We can all be young and beautiful forever! Nope, no narcissistic fantasies there.

I have not studied all the offshoots of Objectivism, but I would bet that the theme of narcissistic power-trips runs through most or even all of them. If this is a common motif of the offshoots, is it a motif of the original philosophy, as well? I think it is, and here I refer you to Bob Wallace's essay "The Narcissism, Leftism and Scapegoating of Ayn Rand," which makes this very point. (Page one is here; two more pages follow.) I don't agree with every single point Wallace makes, but I think his fundamental insight is sound - and very important.

Now to address some specific complaints. Jeff wrote:

After all, it's one thing to criticize Rand on the basis of youthful journal entries; she did write them, though one could argue whether you interpret her intentions correctly.

Here I confess to a certain bewilderment, as I simply cannot see any "interpretation" of Rand's admiration for the psychotic child-murderer Edward Hickman that puts her in a favorable light. And 23 years old is not that "youthful"; it is old enough to drink, drive, vote, serve on a jury, and die in combat. It is surely old enough to know that a man like Hickman is not a heroic figure. If my 23-year-old neighbor were to say that she deeply admired the BTK Killer and was planning to write a novel with a hero inspired by BTK, would I rationalize her statement? No - I would run away and lock my door!

Rand, at age 23, already displayed a profoundly warped psychology and a chilling absence of empathy for Hickman's victim. These are traits that one would expect to see in a pathological narcissist. (They are also traits that show up in Rand's heroes.)

It's quite another to cherry-pick a mixed group -- mostly losers and lunatics, some who are attracted to what they believe is an alternative to what they perceive as an oppressive religion. After all, there certainly is some basis, historically and at present, to regard Christianity as (sometimes) oppressive.

I don't agree that I "cherry-picked" the passages I quoted. They were representative of what I found in the first 120 Google entries (out of 95,900 hits).

Would you accept criticism of Christianity from such people? Would you accept, as reasonable much less valid, criticism of Christianity because some have used it to justify witch burning, etc?

I don't follow this argument, as I was not accepting the Satanists' criticism of Rand. I quoted it merely to show that there are major substantive disagreements between the two movements. Actually I think the Satanists' critiques of Rand are silly.

You know quite well that Rand abhored all such attempts to use her philosophy to justify such outlandish views as those you report. Your attempt at balance is dish-water at best.

Well, part of the balance was quoting the very criticisms that you seem to object to. These showed that there are serious differences between Rand and Satanists.

As for Rand's abhorrence - it is utterly irrelevent. Nietzsche would have abhorred the Nazis, but this does not relieve him of (partial) responsibility for inspiring them. Rand was too narcissistic and blind to her own faults to see that her philosophy logically would attract, must attract, at least some people like Anton LaVey.

Through history there have been many sects formed as off-shoots from a philosopher's main adherents; everything from the neo-Platonists to Jim Jones and the latest moony-loonies. Should the base philosophy and it's author(s) be lumped in with them by association?

My intent was not to lump Objectivism in with Satanism, but to suggest how similar motives (adolescent narcissistic power seeking) are applicable to some adherents of both movements - and to highlight this element of Objectivism by comparing and contrasting it with the much cruder and more vulgar movement that it helped to spawn.

Jeff also mentions that some Christians and Buddhists like Ayn Rand. I'm sure they do, although a Buddhist Objectivist would be a strange sight to see. But I don't think any Christians or Buddhists claim that Rand was a major intellectual influence on their traditions, or that their sacred texts were partially inspired by Atlas Shrugged. These are the claims made by the Church of Satan and its allies.

Probably I should have said some of this in the original post, so as not to give the wrong impression. For the record, then, I am not saying that Ayn Rand wasa Satanist or that Objectivism is Satanism. That would be preposterous. What I am saying is that some (note well: not all) of Rand's followers are motivated by the same adolescent, narcissistic power fantasies that drive other people to join the Church of Satan (or New Utopia, or Transhumanism ...).

This seems to me unarguably true. I just don't see any way around it, and I think it's worth saying, so I intend to keep on saying it.

At least until next year, when I'm moving to New Utopia. All hail Princess Maureen!

This post started as a joke. Or at least, I didn't take it completely seriously -- and I still don't. But maybe I take it just a little bit more seriously now than I first did.

What got me started was reading an online essay critical of Ayn Rand which mentioned that philosophical passages from Atlas Shrugged were said to have been plagiarized in The Satanic Bible. I found this information startling. The Satanic Bible, by Anton LaVey, was a book of religious inspiration and instruction for LaVey's Church of Satan, a San Francisco-based 1960s religion that survives to this day.

Out of curiosity, I decided to perform a Google search for the combined terms "Ayn Rand" and "Satanism."

I got 95,900 hits.

Now, I'm not claiming that all these hits are really relevant. Google seems to accept words like Satan and Satanic as equivalent to Satanism, so Web pages using any of those terms in conjunction with Ayn Rand will come up. And of course I did not review all 95,900 pages. In fact, I scrolled through only the first 120 results, clicking on the pages that look interesting. Even so, it's clear that there are literally thousands of pages on the Internet claiming some kind of connection between Ayn Rand and Satanism.

One of those pages is found on the Web site of the First Satanic Church. Their "links page" prominently includes the URL of the Ayn Rand Institute. (Amusingly enough, on another site a budding Satanist says he was feeling pretty good about the First Satanic Church -- until he saw that they linked to Ayn Rand! This may be the first time that someone has regarded Ayn Rand as actually worse than Satan.)

But why would the First Satanic Church include this link on their page? Well, apparently Ayn Rand's ideas really are influential in some Satanic circles. Here are some representative comments from a web site called SatanService.org:

Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, is an acknowledged source for some of the Satanic philosophy as outlined in The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey. Ayn Rand was a brilliant and insightful author and philosopher and her best-selling novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead continue to attract deserved attention for a new generation of readers. I am a strong admirer of Ayn Rand but I am an even stronger admirer of Anton LaVey for the vital differences between the philosophies of Objectivism and Satanism.

The author then spells out various differences between the two "philosophies," before finishing up with a sales pitch for Ayn Rand:

Let me conclude this brief overview by adding that Satanism has far more in common with Objectivism than with any other religion or philosophy. Objectivists endorse reason, selfishness, greed and atheism. Objectivism sees Christianity, Islam and Judaism as anti-human and evil. The writings of Ayn Rand are inspiring and powerful. If the reader has not yet experienced her power, try her novelette Anthem for a taste. You will almost certainly come back for more.

Modern Satanism can only be traced back to 1966 when Anton LaVey shaved his head, performed a ritual and declared the formation of the "Church of Satan." The religion (or anti-religion if you will) was composed as an answer to organized western religion and culture's repression of natural instincts and desires.

Major influences of the Satanic Philosophy are as follows:

• The Magick of Aleister Crowley, and the works of the Abbey of Thelema.

• The Cynical anti-theistic viewpoints and writings of Friedrich Nietzsche

• The Objectivism philosophy of Ayn Rand

• The Comical and Social viewpoint of people like P.T. Barnum

• The brutal reality of Ragnard Redbeard's writings.

So there's Ayn Rand, nestled securely if uncomfortably between the flamboyant warlock Aleister Crowley and the circus promoter P. T. Barnum. An overview of Satanism in Cornerstone magazine confirms that Objectivist philosophy was important in the development of the Church of Satan, and adds in footnote 20:

By "objectivist", we refer to Ayn Rand's philosophy, objectivism. LaVey, and as a result Satanism, was heavily influenced by both Rand and Nietzsche. See, for example: Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York, New York: Signet, 1957); Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness (New York, New York: Signet, 1964). LaVey stated that his religion was "just Ayn Rand's philosophy, with ceremony and ritual added." LaVey as cited in Bill Ellis, Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 180.

The above quote from Anton LaVey, that the Church of Satan was "just Ayn Rand's philosophy, with ceremony and ritual added," mirrors a comment made by his daughter and fellow Satanist Karla LaVey, who described the Church as "humanism or Ayn Rand with ritual." (This quote is cited on p. 699 of Michael Aquino's book The Church of Satan, downloadable in PDF form here; it is taken from a 1972 article.)

Rand's influence in Satanic circles continued well beyond the 1960s and '70s. Here is an excerpt from an interview with Phil Marfuta, who founded the America Online-based United Satanic Front in 1997. Marfuta is described as a member of The Church of Satan.

Interviewer: I seem to recall that you're involved with some on-campus clubs; namely, the Objectivist and Extropian clubs. How does Satanism relate or differ to what these clubs promote?

PM: Yes, I belong to both clubs. The former is simply a social group of like minds, while the latter is more of an activist/intelligence promotion group.... I'm less concerned with the groups themselves, and more with their semi-Satanic philosophies. I find Objectivism to be extremely similar to Satanism, perhaps more so than any other form of philosophic thought. I also think Ayn Rand is overlooked by many as a significant influence on LaVey. Essentially, Objectivism advocates selfishness, pride, love of life, rejection of mysticism, elitism, personal freedom, and many other things which have come to be associated with the Great Archetype, Satan. The Libertarian political party, which many Satanists identify with, actually arose from Objectivism as well. Ayn Rand also gives, in my opinion, better logical arguments for a Satanic Lifestyle than I've seen any Satanist give. I have never failed to strike some chord with Objectivists, either, though I would only consider a few de facto Satanists. There are several differences between Satanism and Objectivism in both theory and practice, the addition/lack of Satanic Rituals being the most obvious one (Objectivism is militantly anti-spiritual, even in regards to the diluted half-deception we employ). Theoretically, Objectivism is more Utopian than Satanic - Rand believed that a true Objectivist society could work, while I personally feel the majority of people are either unwilling or incapable of taking personal responsibility and handling total personal freedom. I think the realist in me rejects this concept - I think a Libertarian/Objectivist society would collapse from the abundance of the Satanic Sin of Stupidity. Additionally, exploitation is a no-no in Objectivism, while a Satanist usually feels no qualms about taking advantage of the foolishness or gullibility of someone else, even if it is only to teach them a lesson. Lastly, Objectivism regards relationships from person to person as an equal, fair-share trade agreement; though Satanism clearly advocates this between two Satanists, it also embraces the life of the strong at the expense of the weak, when dealing with inferiors. In practice, Satanists are far more sensual and inclined to the arts, while Objectivism stresses logic over dabbling in the subjective. Personally, I feel one can most certainly have both! Most of the Objectivists I meet are some of the most brilliant and fascinating people around, but who lack social skills and come off as "geeky" - this isn't a problem if it works to your advantage, but I see very few Objectivists who practice the art of Lesser Black Magic (even if it would go by another name).

The Objectivist influence on Satanism is strong enough to have prompted an item included in a questionnaire circulated among Satanists by "a scholar of alternative religions" at the University of Wisconsin. He writes, "I have begun to organize what I hope will be a long-range study of Satanism. As the first step in that study, I am collecting demographic data to acquire some sense of the extent of contemporary Satanism. The following questionnaire asks for basic information from which a profile of Satanists can be constructed." The questionnaire includes:

QUESTIONS ABOUT SATANISM'S INTELLECTUAL HERITAGE. Specific thinkers other than Anton LaVey are often mentioned as influencing modern Satanism in one way or another. To what extent are you familiar with:

10. Aleister Crowley?

11. Charles Baudelaire?

12. Frederick Nietzsche?

13. Ayn Rand?

14. Ragnar Redbeard?

A 1978 U.S. Army handbook on various religions, intended for use by chaplains, reports the following about the Church of Satan:

HISTORICAL ROOTS: The Church of Satan is an eclectic body that traces its origin to many sources - classical voodoo, the Hell-Fire Club of eighteenth century England, the ritual magic of Aleister Crowley, and the Black Order of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. It departs from its predecessors by (1) its organization into a church, and (2) the openness of its magical endeavors....

CREEDAL STATEMENTS AND/OR AUTHORITATIVE LITERATURE: The writings of Anton S. LaVey provide the direction for the Satanists - "The Satanic Bible", "The Complete Witch", and "The Satanic Rituals"... Members are also encourage[d] to study pertinent writings which serve as guidelines for Satanic thought, such as Mark Twain, Niccolo Machiavelli, G.S. Shaw, Ayn Rand, Friedrich Nietzsche, etc.

Not all Satanists are affiliated with the Church of Satan, by any means. Some of them, in fact, regard the Church of Satan with disdain. One critic writes:

LaVean Satanists claim to be the "orthodox" faction, but they don't even believe in Satan as a real being. Their "Satanism" is basically an excuse for selfishness and self-indulgence and often parody the values of Ayn Rand and Nietszche.

The criticism of LaVey's views as a mere "parody" of Rand (and Nietzsche) raises the question: To what extent does the Church of Satan actually reflect Objectivist philosophy? Opinions seem to differ. One writer opines:

... the egoist values articulated by Anton Szandor La Vey are extremely similar to the egoist values of Ayn Rand. I agree with that, and I admire La Vey for the same reason that I admire Rand, Spengler, and Nietzsche. The Ego in the Infinite, the Will to Power, is, in fact, the true Weltanschauung, the leitmotif and driving force, of our Western high culture, and the Gothic-style "Faustian" Christianity as it has actually been practiced in the West, the Christianity of the Crusades, has always been much closer to La Vey's doctrine than it is to the Sermon on the Mount.

One of the featured reader reviews on the Amazon.com sales page for The Satanic Bible agrees:

Before LaVey, nobody identified Friedrich Nietzsche, Ayn Rand or Jack London as "Satanic" philosophers. Indeed, a cursory view would suggest these three thinkers have little or nothing in common: Rand considered Nietzsche a syphilitic madman and despised Jack London's ardent socialism. Yet LaVey found common elements within their writing -- a rejection of herd mentality and consensus morality, a philosophy which placed Self-Aggrandization above Self-Sacrifice, and a militant atheism. These, and other writers, were the inspiration for LaVey's "Satanic Bible" ... which, in turn, was the inspiration for many who have followed in LaVey's footsteps.

The FAQ page of a Satanism Web site addresses the question, "Do Satanists have specific role models?"

The saints of our religion have been those great men and women who were the "movers and shakers" of their day - those great philosophers and inventors who helped reshape the way in which we view our world - the paradigm shifters! We proudly present this partial list of names; Ayn Rand, Camille Paglia, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, Friedrich Nietzsche, H.L. Mencken, Wilhelm Reich, Nikola Tesla, Bertrand Russell, Oscar Wilde, Madonna, George Carlin ... and many more!

I am sure that many, possibly all, of these people would have resented being included in the list of Satanists. But evidently these "paradigm shifters" are regarded as Satanists by those in the movement. One of them is a bibliophile who has a Web page called "Welcome to my Occult Library." He explains:

This page is here to provide you with an arsenal of titles you can find to study Magickal Arts. When I started collecting books on Satanism, Magick and the Occult, it was hard to find such books. With lots of research and going to MANY bookstores, I started growing my library.

The Virtue of Selfishness

, by Ayn Rand, is included in his list.

So it's clear that many Satanists themselves regard Rand as an important influence. But are they right to do so? Have they understood her ideas correctly? For one answer, let's return to SatanService.org :

The Satanist, on the other hand, exhibits a behavior 180 [degrees] from that shown by the masses. The Satanist, seeing the mediocrity around him, desires nothing more than to truly live his life free from the interference and petty controls of others. Does this mean that all Satanists are misanthropes, more suited to the life of a hermit? Not at all. However, the Satanist truly has the desire to free himself from the shackles with which the masses have bound themselves.

It has been said that most of history's greatest leaders, those with the most profound influence on the course of history, have been Satanists in all but name (and perhaps, say some, in name as well as deed!). This is an extension of the Satanic impulse to rule over one's own destiny. It just so happens that one of the easiest ways to do that is to control the destiny of others as well. Power, then, is not an end in itself to the Satanist, whether it is power over a single individual or power over an empire spanning continents. Power, in the sense of being able to have others follow your own Will, is merely a means to achieve the second Satanic goal-- freedom of action.

This may seem to be a selfish attitude, and it is. It should be remembered that the Satanist does not waste compassion, or empathy, on those who are undeserving. If the vast majority of the population-- the Masses-- can be efficiently and effectively turned into a tool to serve the ends of the Satanic Magician, then so be it. In fact, the Satanist is actually doing them a favor by providing them with the guiding force of a strong Will which they so desperately crave! Satanists should follow the example of Ayn Rand and see selfishness for a virtue, not a vice.

A good deal of this would not be unfamiliar to readers of Ayn Rand -- "seeing the mediocrity around him ... desires nothing more than to truly live his life free from the interference and petty controls of others ... free himself from the shackles with which the masses have bound themselves ... rule over one's own destiny ... does not waste compassion, or empathy, on those who are undeserving ... follow the example of Ayn Rand and see selfishness for a virtue, not a vice."

On the other hand, some elements are quite contrary to the mature views of Ayn Rand, who would not agree "that one of the easiest ways to [control one's destiny] is to control the destiny of others" or that "the vast majority of the population -- the Masses -- [should] be efficiently and effectively turned into a tool to serve the ends" of the powerful man. In these respects, the Church of Satan and like-minded associations depart quite radically from Rand's later viewpoint, though they are not inconsistent with some of her earlier writings, as found in her youthful journal entries and in the first edition of her novel We the Living.

Or at least they depart from what we might call Rand's "official" doctrine. On the other hand, it could be argued that Rand never did reject her Nietzschean roots as thoroughly as she and her admirers have claimed. Though she inveighed against the evil of seeking power over others, she also spent fourteen years and more than 1000 pages spelling out a vision of the future in which her handful of superior men look on in supreme indifference while "the masses" die of starvation. And there are certainly major passages in Atlas Shrugged that carry the same Nietzschean tone audible in her earliest writings; the "tunnel disaster" sequence, especially its climax, comes to mind. To the extent that there is a disconnect between Rand's stated philosophy and the actual implications of her fiction, it is an open question which element appeals more strongly to her (mostly young and impressionable) readers.

How about the claim that Anton LaVey lifted key elements of The Satanic Bible from Atlas Shrugged? This assertion, which is made frequently by both supporters and detractors of the Church of Satan, appears to be somewhat overblown. It's clear that LaVey had read Atlas Shrugged, or at least John Galt's speech (a long philosophical diatribe near the end of the book) and tried to incorporate some of its ideas in a simplified form. LaVey himself never denied this influence. But there is no real plagiarism. The same scholar who circulated the questionnaire among Satanists points this out in a later article:

I should finally mention that, in circles critical of [the Church of Satan], one often hears the accusation that LaVey's "Nine Satanic Statements," one of the Church's central doctrinal statements, is an unacknowledged "paraphrase...of passages from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged" ... However, when one actually examines these parallels (which are conveniently laid out in Appendix 11 of Aquino's The Church of Satan), one finds that this is a caricature of LaVey's indebtedness to Rand. For example, the first Satanic Statement is:

Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence!

The Rand passage presented as the source of this statement is:

A doctrine that gives you, as an ideal, the role of a sacrificial animal seeking slaughter on the altars of others, is giving you death as your standard. By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man-every man-is an end in himself. He exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.

Rather more lengthy than LaVey's "paraphrase." The second Satanic Statement is a brief as the first Statement:

Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams!

And the Rand passage said to correspond with this Statement, though shorter than the first, is similarly distant in style and content from LaVey:

My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists-and in a single choice: to live. The rest proceeds from these.

And there is a similar disparity in the other "parallels" between the Satanic Statements and Rand. Thus, even if it is true that LaVey was looking at Atlas Shrugged when he composed the Nine Satanic Statements, it would be more proper to say something like he was "inspired" by Rand rather than to assert that he "paraphrased" her work.

Of course, it makes little difference whether LaVey quoted Rand verbatim or merely tried to capture the flavor of her ideas. At least one Objectivist-turned-Satanist sees a clear affinity between the two movements. George C. Smith, in Appendix 11 of Michael Aquino's The Church of Satan, writes:

Although like others I now have some obvious points of disagreement with Objectivism, the legacy of this enormous Satanic break with the past remains a fact of history that is of prime importance to Setians [Temple of Set members, i.e. Satanists] everywhere. To imply or state that the Church of Satan was the first to clearly state the Satanic ethic is to ignore the continuing impact of Ayn Rand and individualists influenced by her work such as Nathaniel Branden ... and Harry Browne ... ( p. 484)

Please understand that I was an Objectivist prior to joining the Church of Satan. It was the intellectual rigor demanded by Objectivism which enabled me to appreciate the full meaning of the Satanic Bible. At the same time I first completed reading it, I said that here I had found an Objectivism with an open mind concening paranormal phenomena. (p. 486)

Some quotations are worth repeating:

Please understand that I was an Objectivist prior to joining the Church of Satan. It was the intellectual rigor demanded by Objectivism which enabled me to appreciate the full meaning of the Satanic Bible.

Somehow I don't think this is a compliment that most Objectivists would be very happy to accept.

I found one other quote in my Google search, which, while not directly relevant, seems like a fitting way to close. An Objectivist discussion group was considering the question, "How did you discover Ayn Rand's ideas?" One fan wrote that when it was discovered that he was reading The Virtue of Selfishness,

Professor Gary Schwartz, who teaches psychology at the University of Arizona, has a new book out, co-authored with writer William Simon. Schwartz has become well-known and controversial for conducting scientific tests of psychic mediums in his Human Energy Systems Laboratory in Tucson. His experimental subjects have included well-known mediums like John Edward and George Anderson, as well as mediums with lower profiles. One of the mediums he tested was Allison DuBois, the soccer-mom medium portrayed by Patricia Arquette on the surprise-hit TV show Medium.

Nevertheless, The Truth about Medium does contain some interesting vignettes. One of the most remarkable involves Schwartz's ill-fated appearance on a pilot episode of The Lawrence O'Donnell Show, a TV talk show intended for the daytime market. O'Donnell, seen frequently as a political analyst for MSNBC, had asked to interview not only Schwartz but two of the mediums he had tested, Allison DuBois and Suzane Northrup.

It all sounded civilized enough. Things, however, did not go quite as expected. Let Schwartz tell the story:

Before the show, I was introduced to the surprise "skeptic" who had been invited to participate as well -- Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller, the "bad boys of magic."... Penn took me aside and whispered angrily, "How can you believe those lying c__ts?" [referring to DuBois and Northrup] ...

O'Donnell came out to introduce our segment. He began by asking the audience of approximately two hundred people, "How many of you believe in survival of consciousness after death?" About 40 percent indicated yes.

He then asked, "How many of you are not sure whether consciousness survives death?" Another group of hands, again about 40 percent.

Then he said, "How many of you are thoughtful people and know that survival of consciousness is not true?" The remaining 20 percent proudly raised their hands...

O'Donnell was introducing our segment with his conclusion before he and I had even had our interview...

I was brought out and seated next to Penn...

Penn is huge, well over six feet tall and heavy, towering over my five-feet-seven frame.... He leaned over, seemingly innocently, and whispered in my ear, "I hate you!"

What did he say? He hates me? Why? I was shocked.

I turned to him, and gently but firmly said, "Excuse me? How can you hate me? You don't even know me."

Penn replied more loudly and angrily, "You have taken my mother's memory in vain!"

I was appalled. I said more forcefully but still gently, "Forgive me, but how can I have taken your mother's memory in vain? I don't even know your mother."

Penn said, "You listen to those lying c__ts, and you even lie in your book!"

What? I lie in my book? I had no idea what he was talking about...

Before the cameras started rolling and the formal interview began, O'Donnell turned to me and whispered in my ear, "Were you an undergraduate at Harvard?"

I said, "No, I received my Ph.D. at Harvard." The Afterlife Experiments book clearly states that I received my undergraduate degree from Cornell.

O'Donnell then said, "So you are not a Harvard college graduate and I will not announce your Ph.D. on the show."

I could not believe what I was hearing. I said, "Excuse me? You seriously question whether I have a Harvard Ph.D.?"

O'Donnell replied, "I did not check to see if you have a Harvard Ph.D., and yes, I believe you are lying about the credentials listed on the jacket of your book."...

I do not know whether he or one of the show's researchers had called Harvard to ask if I have an undergraduate degree from there, but such a call wouldn't make any sense -- my undergraduate degree is from Cornell, my doctorate is from Harvard, and I've never claimed any different...

I then said, "From statements you made to Suzanne and Allison, it sounds to me like you have not read my book."

O'Donnell said, "That's right. I have no need to read your book. Since you have lied about your credentials, you have probably lied about the data you presented in your book!"...

Before I had a chance to digest what he had just said, the cameras began to roll...

He asked me to tell the audience what my current position was at the University of Arizona. I explained that I was currently a professor of psychology, medicine, neurology, psychiatry, and surgery.

O'Donnell then asked me, "Do you have an M.D.?"

I said, "No."

He then asked, "Do you teach surgery to surgeons?"

I said, "Of course not. I am a psychologist, not a surgeon."

He then said, "You know, Dr. Schwartz, that Ph.D.'s can't be professors in medical school departments, and that you are lying about your credentials."...

I began to explain to O'Donnell and the audience that Ph.D.'s for many disciplines regularly have research professorships in both academic and clinical departments in medical schools...

O'Donnell was incensed. He would hear none of this...

I then said, "... I want you to call the University of Arizona to determine if I am lying to you and your audience, or if you're mistaken."

I further said, "I am asking you, on camera, in front of this audience that, when you learn from senior officials at the University of Arizona that the credentials listed on the book jacket are indeed correct, you will announce on a future show -- if you have a future show -- that you were mistaken about my credentials and that you had falsely accused me of lying."

O'Donnell replied, "Absolutely not!"...

As the interview progressed, it became apparent that O'Donnell was not doing this simply for Jerry Springer "shock value" -- he seemed to genuinely believe that I was a liar. And unfortunately he had no interest in checking the evidence to see if this potentially slanderous story about my credentials was actually true...

O'Donnell was clearly angry with me. He became furious when I told him after the interview that I felt sorry his convictions were so strong that he would not be willing to seek information that could confirm or disconfirm his cherished beliefs.

The above behavior, as recounted by Schwartz, might seem hard to believe. But to me it has the ring of truth. That's because both Penn Jillette and Lawrence O'Donnell have behaved similarly in other situations.

Penn Jillette was the co-host of a cable TV show colorfully titled Bullshit!, which purported to unmask various frauds. One of the earliest episodes dealt with mediumship. Penn became quite angry on the show, insisting in his expletive-laden style that he would never permit any medium to claim to be in communication with his late mother. His strong feelings for his mother were quite apparent.

Evidently these feelings are what led to his hostile attitude toward mediumship in the first place. An article in the January 24, 2003, edition of the Los Angeles Times reports "that after his mother's death a few years ago [Penn says] 'all my tolerance went away' for those who profess to be able to contact 'the other side.' "

Penn's whispered asides to Schwartz are thus entirely in keeping with public statements he's made on this subject.

But what about O'Donnell? Would a seasoned political pundit and frequent TV talking head would really behave in such a weird and irresponsible manner? An answer may be seen in O'Donnell's memorable meltdown on an October 22, 2004, edition of the cable TV show Scarborough Country. On the show, which was guest-hosted by Pat Buchanan, O'Donnell faced off against John O'Neill, who ran the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign aimed at discrediting John Kerry's Vietnam war record. In the "debate," which quickly dissolved into chaos because of O'Donnell's unruly behavior, it became obvious that O'Donnell was utterly incapable of controlling himself or of even listening to a contrary point of view.

(click image to enlarge)

Unfortunately the video seems to have disappeared from the Web. This is a shame, because from a mere transcript one cannot appreciate the full craziness of O'Donnell's hysteria, which some bloggers characterized as a psychotic break. Still, an excerpt from the transcript gives some of the flavor of his performance:

BUCHANAN: Tell me, John, about—did not the citation Thurlow got say that they were taking fire?

O‘NEILL: It said under fire. That‘s true. It was based upon Kerry‘s own after-action report.

O‘DONNELL: That‘s a lie. It‘s another lie. That‘s a lie.

O‘NEILL: Which said there had been 5,000 meters of fire.

O‘DONNELL: Absolutely lie.

(CROSSTALK)

O‘DONNELL: You lie in that book endlessly claiming that reports belonged to Kerry that don‘t have his name on it, John O‘Neill.

You lie about documents endlessly. His name is not on the reports.

You‘re just lying about it.

(CROSSTALK)

O‘DONNELL: And you lied about Thurlow‘s Bronze Star. You lied about it as long as you could until "The New York Times" found the wording of what was on the citation that you, as a lying writer, refused to put in your pack-of-lies book.

(CROSSTALK)

O‘DONNELL: Disgusting, lying book.

BUCHANAN: John, let me ask you this.

O‘NEILL: And you, Larry, are a professional liar.

(CROSSTALK)

O‘DONNELL: You have no standards, John O‘Neill, as an author. And you know it. It‘s a pack of lies. You are unfit to publish.

(CROSSTALK)

O‘NEILL: There are 254 of us, Larry. It‘s a little hard to call us all liars.

BUCHANAN: All right, John O‘Neill, let me ask you a quick question. How do you know for certain that John Kerry wrote the after-action report that said the boats were under fire?

O‘NEILL: It has been tracked down specifically in...

O‘DONNELL: Lies.

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Oh, let him talk.

(CROSSTALK)

O‘DONNELL: He just lies. He just spews out lies.

(CROSSTALK)

O‘DONNELL: Point to his name on the report, you liar. Point to his name, you liar. These are military records. Point to a name.

After the commercial, things continued in much the same vein. Again, from the transcript it is hard to realize just how out of control O'Donnell was. He was shouting, almost screaming, interrupting constantly, with a wild-eyed look that was truly bizarre. John O'Neill, by contrast, kept his cool. The normally voluble Pat Buchanan was reduced to a bit player, hardly able to get a word in edgewise. The meltdown of the MSNBC analyst was noteworthy enough that the next night Buchanan had to read a prepared statement apologizing for O'Donnell's conduct.

So, if I may judge by that remarkable performance on live television, I can see Lawrence O'Donnell very easily as the sort of person Schwartz describes.

Had O'Donnell been interested in a substantive debate with Gary Schwartz, there were legitimate issues he could have raised. Some skeptics have quarreled with the protocols used in the experiments, although these have been progressively tightened over time. My main criticism of the work done by the Human Energy Systems Laboratory is that they have been extremely slow to publish transcripts of the sessions conducted with their test subjects. To my knowledge, no complete, unedited transcript of any of their sessions has yet been made public. Only selected excerpts have been made public in The Afterlife Experiments and on Schwartz's Web site. In one case, the Montague Keen experiment, the excerpts are quite extensive, but still not complete. And this is only one of many sessions that have been conducted. Where are the other transcripts?

When I raised this question in an online forum in which I used to participate, a defender of HESL responded that because of a lack of personnel, there had been delays in posting the transcripts on the Web site. The situation, I was told, would soon be rectified. But this was several months ago, and still no complete transcripts have been posted.

The transcripts must exist or else it would be impossible to score the results -- to tabulate the mediums' "hits" and "misses." So if the transcripts exist as electronic files, all anyone needs to do is upload them to the Web site server and then add a link to each document on the appropriate Web page. This should take only a few minutes. The fact that HESL has been so tardy in releasing its data means they are basically asking us to take some of their claims, especially their more recent claims, on faith. They are asking us to believe that if we saw the raw transcripts, we would evaluate and tabulate them the same way the HESL researchers have done. Maybe we would, and maybe we wouldn't. This is the sort of thing we have to see for ourselves. Sometimes what looks like a stunning hit to one person may look like a vague generality to someone else. This unavoidably subjective aspect of the work is what makes seeing the raw data so important.

There were, in other words, legitimate issues for O'Donnell to explore, had he taken the trouble to do so. Apparently he was more interested in demonstrating his moral and intellectual superiority over anyone who might take "the survival of consciousness after death" seriously. He did so by launching unwarranted personal attacks. Penn Jillette seems to have been even worse; he reportedly tried the method of intimidation.

"I find it quite amazing," Gary Schwartz concludes, "that mounting evidence indicates that at least some mediums have more honesty and integrity than certain media personalities and magicians."

In an amusing postscript to the incident, it turned out that the show's staff had neglected to get Schwartz to sign a standard release form. Schwartz never did sign it, and the pilot episode never aired. Needless to say, The Lawrence O'Donnell Show did not find its way onto the TV schedule.

As infants we all start out as narcissists, but most of us eventually develop a sense of fairness and some concern for the rights of others. There's a class of people, however, who never grow up and have no idea why they should. I call them "people who eat people."

They have no problem turning down requests for help because their first thought is "Why should I have to do that?" It never occurs to them that they should give back as much as they take because they feel they're not like other people. Anyway, they have a hard time imagining that other people actually have feelings or needs or plans as valuable as their own. Like small children, they flatter and charm and make promises to get what they want and are outraged if they're not given their way. Their efforts on their own behalf are impressive: They'll create a complete philosophy to convince you (and themselves) that anyone who withholds anything from them is disloyal or dishonest or wants nothing but to injure them. When they have a problem, they sigh and look unhappy -- where you can see them. A narcissist rarely wastes time suffering in private.

They're people who have turned two-year-old self-centeredness into a profession.

The fascinating thing, however, is not these childish tyrants; it's the people who become their caretakers.

If you're someone who has trouble saying no, they can play you like a fiddle. You may know how unfair your situation is; you probably even protest from time to time, trying to make them understand the unfairness. If you do, their responses stun you with callousness. You complain to friends, not realizing that they usually see the setup far more clearly than you do and are horrified that you capitulate to such a person. Often they say as much. But you never listen to their advice because what you really want is for the selfish person to understand how bad he's making you feel.

What strange thing to want from a narcissist! Unlike you, who care too much about the feelings of others, narcissists don't care enough. If you even consider arguing with them about fairness, you've already lost, because they see life as a war of survival, and they're always combat-ready. Expecting fairness from them is like expecting the opposing team in football to give you the ball out of the goodness of their hearts. The absurdity would be funny if it weren't so destructive to your life. (pp. 233-234)

Hmm. Adults "who never grow up ... feel they're not like other people ... have a hard time imagining that other people actually have feelings ... are outraged if they're not given their own way ... create a complete philosophy to convince you (and themselves) that anyone who withholds anything from them is disloyal or dishonest or wants nothing but to injure them."

I don't pay too much attention to the so-called "skeptics of the paranormal" anymore. I've found that their arguments are too weak and repetitive, and the evidence they cite too flimsy and one-sided, to warrant giving them much of my time. But recently I did read an article on the Web site of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, or CSICOP, about so-called "psychic detectives."

Though I was prepared to be unimpressed, I must admit I was surprised - because even by the standards of the CSICOP pseudoskeptics, this is a sad piece of work.

You might wonder why I call them pseudoskeptics. The reason is that true skeptics are open-minded and willing to consider all the evidence in a judicious way. The pseudoskeptics, on the other hand, are mere dogmatists who engage in verbal sleight of hand to win arguments and reinforce their pre-existing, unshakable assumptions.

The author of "The Case of the 'Psychic Detectives," Joe Nickell, begins by flaunting his pseudoskeptic credentials in high style:

Although mainstream science has never validated any psychic ability, self-styled clairvoyants, diviners, spirit mediums, and soothsayers continue to sell their fantasies—and in some cases to shrewdly purvey their cons—to a credulous public. Particularly disturbing is a resurgence of alleged psychic crime-solving.

This little passage is so characteristic of the tenor of pseudoskeptical argumentation that I think we should pause over it just for moment. Notice the deliberately sarcastic language -- "diviners ... soothsayers" -- and the tacit assumption that all such claims must be "fantasies" "shrewdly purvey[ed]" as "cons." Notice that the claimants are "shrewd," while the public is "gullible." And the whole trend is "disturbing."

Here we have the essence of the pseudoskeptics' mindset. There is no real argument offered. There is merely an attempt to intimidate. The underlying message is: If you believe this "psychic" stuff, you are gullible and you are being conned.

No one wants to be gullible. No one wants to think he's being conned. This argument by intimidation can be remarkably effective on people who are susceptible to this kind of intellectual bullying.

Oh, and one more point. Take another look at this statement: "mainstream science has never validated any psychic ability." Sounds pretty authoritative, doesn't it? But before you allow yourself to be too impressed, you should realize that that the pseudoskeptics regard any study of the paranormal as outside the bounds of "mainstream science" by definition. Therefore, when Nickell claims that mainstream science hasn't validated any psychic ability, he is merely stating a tautology. From his point of view, any scientific study that does validate psychic ability (and there have been many, most recently the Ganzfeld tests) is automatically excluded from the domain of mainstream science. So mainstream science can never validate the paranormal; to the extent that science validates the paranormal, it ceases to be mainstream. Q.E.D.

After this less-than-promising introduction, Nickell proceeds to debunk "several self-claimed psychic shamuses" who are said to have assisted the police.

The first psychic he takes aim at is Allison DuBois, whom Nickell sarcastically refers to as "the 'real-life' Phoenix-area clairvoyant/spiritualist whose alleged assistance to law enforcement is the basis for NBC's drama series Medium." Of course, the quote marks around the term real-life are unnecessary, since whatever else she is, Allison DuBois is unquestionably a real person.

Nickell, however, asserts -- or at least strongly implies -- that she has been lying about her involvement in police cases. His evidence? "Both the Glendale [Arizona] police and the Texas Rangers deny Dubois worked with them." Now, how often does a law enforcement agency admit to hiring a psychic as a consultant? Does the mere fact that official spokespersons for these agencies deny any knowledge of Dubois prove, in itself, that she's been lying? Even on the TV show, it's made clear that Allison's involvement in the cases is kept undercover, a closely guarded secret.

Incidentally, DuBois claims to consult to the Phoenix District Attorney's office, not the Glendale police. There seems to be no doubt that she did intern at the DA's office. One possible reason for not mentioning specific cases she's worked on is concern for her safety. From an interview: “I guess I get put in the danger that now the cases I've worked where I helped the people on death row ... They didn't know who I was in the courtroom before. Now they do. That worries me a little bit.’’

Maybe DuBois has helped solve crimes or maybe she hasn't. I have no way of knowing, and if I may judge by what Nickell has told us, neither does he. But I am not optimistic about Nickell's accuracy in this area, because he proceeds to level another, even more questionable criticism.

The [Medium Web] site mentions that DuBois is "the youngest member of the elite medium ‘Dream Team’ studied by Dr. Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona in Tucson." That isn’t much to boast of: Schwartz, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Arizona, is credulous about the paranormal, and his book The Afterlife Experiments (2002) claims he has provided scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness and the reality of spirit communication. However, noted parapsychology critic Ray Hyman (2003, 22) observes that Schwartz is "badly mistaken," adding: "The research he presents is flawed. Probably no other extended program in psychical research deviates so much from accepted norms of scientific methodology as this one does."

Note that Nickell provides no support whatsoever for his assertion that Schwartz is "credulous about the paranormal"; after all, merely quoting another skeptic (Hyman) hardly counts as evidence. Hyman's uninformed and scurrilous claims have been extensively rebutted by Schwartz on the Internet. (If you'd like to reada balanced view of Schwartz's work with DuBois, which actually gives both sides, check out this article in the Arizona Daily Star.)

For a "credulous" naif, Schwartz has pretty good academic credentials, I would say. Here's his bio:

After receiving his doctorate from Harvard University, he served as a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Yale University, director of the Yale Psychophysiology Center, and co-director of the Yale Behavioral Medicine Clinic. He has published more than four hundred scientific papers, edited eleven academic books ...

Hey, what are Joe Nickell's academic credentials, anyway? According to an online bio, here they are:

B.A. University of Kentucky, 1967

M.A. University of Kentucky, 1982

Ph.D. University of Kentucky, 1987

The same bio informs us that "Joe Nickell has worked professionally as a stage magician, private investigator, journalist, and university instructor."

Promotional copy for Nickell's new book Secrets of the Sideshows (published by his alma mater, the University of Kentucky) adds the detail that he was "once a carnival pitchman."

Yet another Web page further expands Nickell's curricula vitae: "undercover detective, teacher, draft dodger, river boat manager, carnival promoter, magician, investigator and spokesperson." In an interview on this page we are told that

Joe impressed on [the interviewer] the difference between being a scientist and an investigator. Joe seems to have no significant credentials just as his mentor: James Randi. In both cases, the lack of single significant credentials is much more than offset by a more important broad area of knowledge.

Okay, so I guess this constitutes an admission - Joe Nickell has no "significant credentials." But he does have "a more important broad area of knowledge." Presumably this is where his experiences as draft dodger, river boat manager, and carnival promoter come in. And remember, he does have a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky.

Now, far be it from me to cast aspersions on that school, but some people might argue that Schwartz (doctorate from Harvard, professor at Yale, four hundred scientific papers, eleven academic books) might have a slightly better background for conducting a scientific study than a former "carnival pitchman." Yet Nickell dismisses Schwartz as "credulous," then dismisses DuBois by association with Schwartz.

If this is the best Nickell can do to embarrass DuBois, one wonders why he even bothered to try.

Next, Nickell tackles the psychic Noreen Renier. In perhaps his most embarrassing argument, Nickell insinuates that if Renier were legitimate, she ought to be willing to be tested by "psychic investigator James Randi, who offers a million dollars to anyone who can exhibit such a power under scientifically controlled conditions."

Anyone who has taken the trouble to look at Randi's much-publicized but utterly worthless psychic challenge is likely to conclude that the game has been rigged so that nobody can ever win. Randi is on record as having rejected in advance at least one claimant whose alleged abilities could have been easily tested, and might actually have been verified. Randi himself has been quoted by CSICOP founding member Dennis Rawlins as saying that he will never have to pay a dime of his prize money because "I always have an out."* (The quote is here, in the last paragraph; this entire page is worth reading.)

Now, I have no idea if Renier is legitimate, and the various predictions she's apparently made about the assassinations of public figures seem pretty dubious to me. On the other hand, she did evidently help police find the body of a missing man who had driven his truck into a rock quarry, where it lay submerged at a considerable depth. This case was presented on Court TV's show Psychic Detectives. Nickell dismisses the episode as "a slanted treatment of the case that omitted crucial information and offered a highly dubious recreation of events."

Citing the research of another debunker, Gary Posner, Nickell suggests that Renier could easily have guessed the location of the truck - and the dead man inside. "Renier had been informed that Lewis's truck had not been found, despite intensive searching. If it was in the vicinity, notes Posner, .... it must surely have been 'submerged in a body of water.' "

"Surely"? In other words, it was obvious from the start that Lewis's truck was underwater?

Of course, it was not obvious at all. This is merely an example of what Nickell elsewhere calls "retrofitting," the alleged tendency of psychics to refashion their predictions to fit the results. No doubt some phony psychics do practice this technique -- but the pseudoskeptics are the real masters of the ruse.

Let's think about it. No one knew where this man Lewis had gone or if he was alive or dead. He had driven off in his truck and had been missing for days. Yet Nickell and Posner simply assume that the truck, with the dead man in it, "was in the vicinity." Why? Wouldn't it be equally likely that the truck was a hundred miles away ... or a thousand miles away? And even if it was in the area, why did it have to be underwater? In a rural area, couldn't it be concealed in the woods or in an abandoned shed or in a junkyard or parked on a side street, unnoticed?

And who would have known that Lewis would be dead inside the truck? Maybe he was still alive and just abandoned the thing. Or maybe he was a victim of a carjacking, and was shot and left dead in the woods while the truck was driven off into another county. There are a million possibilities.

Only in retrospect, after the case was solved, could anyone claim that the location of the truck was obvious. After all, if it was so obvious, why did the police call in a psychic in the first place? They consulted Renier only after conventional avenues of investigation had failed.

And what happened once they consulted Renier? Why, they found the truck, with Lewis's body inside, in circumstances that closely matched the scene she had described. The police were sufficiently impressed to risk the ridicule of people like Nickell by going public with the story. Predictably, Nickell rewards the police by branding them "obviously credulous." And yet he expects us to believe that if law enforcement authorities in Arizona and Texas actually have worked with Allison DuBois, they'll be eager to admit it.

Nickell next deals with a woman named Carla Baron, whom I have never heard of and who, if Nickell's description can be trusted, does indeed sound like a dubious character. So I'll give him that one.

Then he discusses a certain Carol Pate. He mainly debunks Pate by quoting Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, who was good enough to quote Nickell in one of his columns. Nickell returns the favor by extensively quoting Zorn, clearly a fellow after his own heart. "Turns out the woman was just guessing, like every other phony who claims to have such powers," Zorn concludes (emphasis added), thereby dismissing 150 years of paranormal research with one ignorant sweep of the hand. His basis for this comprehensive verdict? A spokesperson for one police department said that Pate's psychic prediction in one criminal case apparently didn't pan out.

Well, maybe it didn't. Or maybe it did, and the police are not eager to advertise their reliance on a psychic to a sarcastic, skeptical columnist at the local newspaper. Who knows? We don't get enough details to judge the credibility of Zorn's -- or Nickell's -- conclusion.

Finally Nickell reports a case that he personally investigated, that of Etta Louise Smith. He tells us,

Smith never claimed to be a psychic sleuth, but she allegedly had a one-time "vision" of a murder victim’s body. This was so accurate that it led to her arrest by Los Angeles police, although she was subsequently "vindicated" by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury.

Notice that he puts the word vindicated in quotes. We'll come back to this.

Smith’s alleged vision was of the location of the body of a missing nurse, Melanie Uribe, at an area in rural Lopez Canyon. Indeed, after Smith had gone to the police and pinpointed the location on a map, she decided to drive to the site with two of her children. They had located the body and were en route to a telephone when she met the arriving police!

She was later questioned about her precise knowledge and was given a lie detector test, which she failed. According to a detective’s sworn testimony, "the polygraphist indicated that she was being deceptive," even "trying to control her breathing" ... She was jailed for four days on suspicion of having some connection with the crime or criminals.

Nickell, who takes pride in being a skeptic, apparently has no skepticism at all about the validity of polygraph tests, despite the fact that these tests are known to be so inaccurate that their results are not admitted as evidence in court. Almost any sign of nervous tension will be interpreted by the polygraphist as evidence of deception. If you had just been accused of being an accessory in a homicide, would you be nervous?

Smith subsequently sued the police for the trauma she had suffered, asking $750,000 in damages. She won her case, but the jury, some of whom were apparently suspicious of Smith's "psychic" vision, awarded her a mere $26,184 - sufficient to reimburse her for lost wages and attorney's fees, but providing little for pain and suffering.

Note that Smith "won her case," so she was indeed vindicated by the Superior Court. There was no need for Nickell, earlier, to put that word in quotes. The fact that she received "a mere" $26,184 in damages is irrelevant; if she won the case, then the jury presumably did not think she was covering up for the killer. And this is hardly the first time that someone suing for a large amount of money ended up with a much smaller sum.

But if she wasn't an accesory, then how to explain that she knew where to find the murdered nurse? The usual way where pseudoskeptics are concerned -- with a lot of handwaving and "what if" speculation.

Is it not possible that an acquaintance of Smith, privy to information about the crime, sought her help in revealing the information? Could Smith not merely have been protecting her source? The possibility gains credibility from the fact that the killers were uncovered because one of them had boasted of the crime to people in his Pacoima neighborhood and, at the time, Smith lived in Pacoima!

From this brief statement, you would be forgiven for assuming that Pacoima is a small town where everybody knows everybody else. It is not. Pacoima is part of the vast urban sprawl of the San Fernando Valley in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The population of Pacoima is 101,862. This makes it a city, not a small town - a city, in fact, that is larger than Santa Barbara, Fargo, Miami Beach, or Nashua, NH, to name a few.

Nickell provides no evidence to suggest that Smith lived anywhere near the killer's neighborhood. If she had lived in that neighborhood, or even close-by, don't you think he would've mentioned it?

So Nickell's debunking of this case depends on accepting a polygraph test as legitimate evidence and then speculating that Smith may have received the tip from the killer because she lived in the same general vicinity, along with 100,000 other people. This is pretty thin soup, wouldn't you say?

Yet Nickell, pleased with himself, is able to conclude without hesitation or caveat, "As these cases and profiles indicate, psychics do not solve crimes ..."

Case closed? Hardly. There are some people, whose knowledge of crimesolving far exceeds that of a former carnival pitchman and river boat manager, who don't go along with Nickell's confident assertion. One of them is Vernon Geberth, author of Practical Homicide Investigation(third edition; 1996), probably the single most authoritative and widely cited book in its field.

On pages 665 - 670 of his 901-page manual, Geberth deals with the admittedly controversial issue of using psychic consultants in criminal cases. He relies, interestingly enough, on correspondence with "several psychics including Ms. Noreen Renier [who] has worked with various police agencies including the FBI on homicide cases and other criminal investigations." Renier, you will recall, is one of the psychics Joe Nickell did his best to debunk.

Geberth reviews the claims made for and against pyschics, and concludes that while "charlatans and frauds ... flourish in the area of extrasensory perception," the use of legitimate psychics may be warranted in difficult cases. "Investigatively speaking, there has been sufficient documentation of successes to merit consideration of this technique on a case-by-case basis." Geberth ends on a note of caution and balance that Nickell and his allies would do well to emulate:

The police have much to learn about the relative value of psychic phenomena in criminal investigations. Furthermore, there is a definite need for an evaluation of the successes and failures of psychic phenomena as they relate to law enforcement before they can be recognized as a "legitimate" investigative tool. Perhaps in time, the psychic and homicide investigator may form the perfect partnership against crime. In any event, I neither encourage nor discourage the use of psychics in homicide investigations.

Spoken like a true (not a pseudo) skeptic!

-------

* From Rawlins' article "sTARBABY": "[Randi] assured me how cautious he was in the testing for his well-publicized $10,000 prize for proof of psychic abilities (for which he acts as policeman, judge and jury -- and thus never has supported my idea of neutral judgment of CSICOP tests). 'I always have an out,' he said."

The original prize was $10,000. It is now said to be more than $1,000,000.

By the way, in one controversy over his psychic challenge, Randi claimed that he had assembled a panel of independent judges that included Stanley Krippner, a respected paranormal investigator. But Krippner was not actually on the panel, having explicitly declined to participate. When a third party, Pam Blizzard, pointed this out to Randi, he went ballistic in a public diatribe, calling Blizzard a liar and promising to cross Times Square naked while pushing a peanut with his nose if any evidence could be produced that Krippner was not on the panel. Krippner's statement was duly produced; Randi has not apologized, nor has he been spotted in Times Square, naked or otherwise.

Sher's basic point is that for our first four decades, we are creatures of narcissism - products of biology, she would say. I would amend this to "biology + ego." From babyhood onward, we demand to be the center of attention. We want praise. We want adoration. We want unconditional love. And we will go to almost any lengths to obtain it. We will drive ourselves to exhaustion chasing big-money, high-status careers. We will knock ourselves out seeking romantic infatuation which rarely lasts. We will stew in our juices if we are overlooked, ignored, or taken for granted. And all because we believe that the universe does - or should - revolve around us.

Then we hit midlife and have a crisis. Why? Because it becomes painfully obvious that the universe does not revolve around us. And no amount of success, approval, or even love is enough to fill the void of our unmet narcissistic needs.

So we get depressed. We've been on the fast track for years, and now it turns out to be a fast track to nowhere. Our childish and adolescent dreams of power and status suddenly seem hollow, but we have nothing to replace them with.

Except we do. What we replace them with is our authentic selves. And this, says Sher, is the magic key that unlocks the second half of our lives. We can forget all about impressing others and trying to hog the spotlight and trying to win the race. We now see through the ego-driven, biology-driven impulses that made us compete for affection and prestige. We are finally free to be who we really are. We can stop fretting about keeping up with the neighbors, crunching our abs, turning heads at the singles bar, or "making something" of ourselves, and start just living, learning, and enjoying the experience.

Of course there's a lot more to it than that. If you or anyone you know is having a midlife crisis, give Sher's wisdom a chance. There's a lot to learn.

Below is one of my favorite passages from the book, something I first read six years ago and have always remembered. It has to do with our zany insistence on compiling impossibly long, never-to-be-completed to-do lists.

When my son was living in Italy, he had a friend named Pietro. One day Pietro was commenting on Americans and their to-to lists. He said, "You, Mateo, like all Americans, put down many things on your list, and all the day long you try very hard to do them, and you cross them off one by one. But at night, when you go to sleep, always there are some things left on your list, so you are failure.

"I wake up, and I have only one thing on my list. Today I go to visit my friend Mateo. I take a shower and dress myself. I drink a cup of coffee. I buy a good bottle of wine and take the bus to the house of my friend. We spend a very good afternoon. We talk, perhaps we walk. At night I go home and cross this thing off my list, and when I go to sleep, I am a success."

... to believe it. Via RightWingNews, an actual I'm-not-making-this-up comic book printed by the radical animal-rights head-cases at PETA and distributed to small, impressionable children:

(click on image to expand)

The comic book includes these words of advice for terror-stricken tots: "Until your daddy learns that it's not 'fun' to kill, keep your doggies and kitties away from him. He's so hooked on killing defenseless animals that they could be next!"

Your Daddy Kills Animals! is a follow-up to an earlier PETA comic book (also via RightWingNews):

This charmer concludes with the words:

Ask your mommy how many animals she killed to make her fur clothes. Then tell her you know she paid men to hurt and kill the animals. Everyone knows. And the sooner she stops wearing fur, the sooner the animals will be safe. Until then, keep your doggie or kitty friends away from mommy -she's an animal killer!"

I read an interesting post at CHUD.com today on the disappointing box office returns for the SF film Serenity. What got me thinking was the author's musing on the varied motivations that go into the crazy business of making movies.

[If Hollywood executives] just wanted to make money, there are other industries that don’t have the kind of risk the movie industry does. The people in Hollywood aren’t just drawn by the money – the suits come for the glamour and the art. The glamour is self-explanatory (how often does the owner of a paper company get profiled by major magazines?). The art is how they convince themselves that they’re doing something different than the guy who owns a paper company. What all this adds up to is that the Hollywood executive type isn’t just looking at a spreadsheet covered in numbers – there’s a complex series of neuroses and delusions that inform their decisions.

These neuroses and delusions work two ways. They’ll make a movie that can never earn money because it’ll be a possible Oscar contender or otherwise a “prestige” picture (and I do know that there are still other, more complex reasons for this – the desire for art is one, but there’s also the idea that cultivating the image of being a studio who is “good to the talent,” ie is willing to throw 30 million down the toilet for a prestige project, will pay off by attracting other, more money earning, talent). But it also means that appearances are everything.

This is true, of course, but there is another factor that's only implied in the above -- namely, political correctness. All or virtually all Hollywood execs are liberals. Their friends are liberals. The "talent" they work with are liberals. The movie reviewers who grade their efforts are liberals.

And the result is a movie like North Country, the new Charlize Theron flick.

North Country may be a very good movie. It may win all kinds of awards. It may even make a profit, though I doubt it. But one thing I do not doubt is that it was made only because studio execs see the world through liberal eyes.

Consider the premise of North Country, as featured prominently in the TV ads. It's a film, we are stridently informed, about "the first class-action sexual harassment suit." (The original working title was Class Action, by the way.)

Now, let's face it. Most people, including most potential moviegoers, do not lie awake at night wondering what it was like to be involved in the first class-action sexual harassment suit. They may lie awake wondering what it was like to land on Omaha Beach on D-Day ... or what it would be like to explore Mars ... or what it would be like to have the perfect romance ... but dreams of class-action sexual harassment lawsuits do not fill their heads. It is unlikely that there is a large ready-made audience for this story. Maybe an audience can be cajoled to see it if the reviews are good enough or it wins some major Oscars or if Charlize Theron has a large enough fan base, but there is no built-in, preexisting audience demand for North Country.

Why, then, did it get made? It got made because it is a film that execs can use to impress (liberal) friends, (liberal) "talent," (liberal) reviewers, and above all, their own (liberal) selves. It's an executive's way of looking in the mirror and feeling okay about his or her life. "Sure, I've made a lot of exploitative crap," he/she will say, "but I also made North Country. I'm not just a hack. I'm raising the public's awareness of sexual harassment. I'm a hero!"

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this. I'm just saying that profit alone does not explain the existence of a movie like North Country. There are deeper motivations at work, and they have everything to do with the insecurities of the studio executives and their need to be invited to the right parties and seen in a certain light. "He's the guy who greenlighted North Country" is a free pass to the respect and admiration of their peers, at least for another year.

No, let me amend that. Actually, I do think there is one thing wrong here. The same execs who approved North Country, knowing it will probably lose money, will never in a million years give the go-ahead to a conservative political film, even if it is likely to turn a profit. And they will turn down the conservative film for the exact same reasons they went forward with North Country -- conformity with the rest of the Hollywood crowd. "He's the guy who greenlighted The Ronald Reagan Story" is decidedly not a free pass to the respect and admiration of their peers, even if The Ronald Reagan Story makes a fortune. (That is, unless The Ronald Reagan Story trashes Reagan -- in which case, full speed ahead.)

Look at Mel Gibson, whose self-financed movie about Jesus was a huge hit. Here's a guy who risked millions of his own dollars to make an independent "art" film that succeeded beyond anyone's expectations. Is he the toast of Hollywood? More like a pariah, albeit a very wealthy pariah. And Hollywood is like high school - everybody wants to be part of the "in" crowd, and the worst possible fate is to be an outcast. Studio execs look at Gibson, and they whisper a silent prayer: "There but for the grace of PETA and People for the American Way go I."

When the US scored a spectacular victory in the Persian Gulf War (the one in '91, I mean), there were predictions of a spate of flag-waving Hollywood movies that would celebrate the event. These movies did not materialize. The only Hollywood movie about the Persian Gulf War that I can recall is Three Kings, a cynical film about American soldiers trying to profiteer off the Iraqis. After our obliteration of the Taliban in Afghanistan, there were more predictions of a new wave of patriotic war pictures. Didn't happen, and it's not gonna. "He's the guy who greenlighted that jingoistic piece of &%!%! about the war" is a surefire way to get yourself stricken from the A-list for life.

What this means is that Hollywood, increasingly, is talking only to itself and to that portion of the public who agree with it. Want to make a movie about blacklisted writers, war profiteers, corrupt businessmen, environmental polluters, sleazy evangelists, or the first Title IX sports team to win a homecoming game? Go for it -- even though we've seen those stories a hundred times already. But don't even think of making a movie about a race-baiting hustler who bears a striking resemblance to Al Sharpton, or an unscrupulous lawyer who targets an innocent pharmaceutical company for its "deep pockets," or a grieving mother who becomes the tool of cynical political activists and is tossed aside when she is no longer useful. Just forget about it -- even though these movies might actually offer audiences something fresh.

And meanwhile the box office numbers just keep going down ... Is there a connection? Beats me. But one thing is certain: There's a lot more to Hollywood than just money.

Good news! It appears that I am about to reap a considerable financial windfall. At least, this is my understanding on the basis of an email I received today, addressed "Dear Friend." Apparently one of my relatives passed on and left me a multi-million-dollar fortune! Oddly enough, I never knew about this relation; what's even stranger is that he was Taiwanese, and I am of Scottish ancestry.

The attorney who was kind enough to track me down is clearly an ethical professional. Not only did he take the trouble to find me, but he goes out of his way to say, "I want you to know that I never master minded the death of the deceased fellow." That's good to know. I'm not sure I'd want to do business with a lawyer who killed his own client - although where a payoff of "$16.8 million United States Dollars" is concerned, I might be willing to take my chances!

You may be cynical enough to think that this email is not on the up-and-up. But the attorney, Mr. John W. Wilo, has anticipated your concern by including a link to a CNN story about the plane crash that took his client's life. This is obviously proof that everything he is telling me is true.

Now, I know what you're thinking, but don't worry - I'm not going to blow all my newfound wealth on some reckless impulse purchase, like a Learjet. I plan to invest it wisely and live off the interest and dividends.

Do you think Mr. John W. Wilo can assist me in finding a reputable financial planner?

From John W. Wilo.Wilo & Associates, Legal practitioners.Lome Togo.

Dear Friend,

(PRIVATE/CONFIDENTIAL).

I am Mr. John W. Wilo, a solicitor at law and a personal attorney to Late MR SHEU YUAN-DONG my client. My client, Mr.Sheu Yuan-dong unfortunately lost his live with his wife and their only daughter on February 16, 1998 in a plane crash. He has $16.8 million United States Dollars with EcoBank here in Lome, Togo.The fund has been dormant in his account with this Bank without anybody available to claim this fund.

Mr. SHEU YUAN-DONG, my client was the Governor of Taiwan Central (Reserve) Bank untill his death. Since then I have made several enquiries to locate any of my client's extended relatives, this has also proved unsuccessful hence I contacted you to assist me in securing this money left behind by my client with the EcoBank Lome Togo before it gets confiscated by the bank authority. The Director of the Ecobank contacted me on Friday 15-08-2004 and asked that I as the attorney to late MR SHEU YUAN-DONG should present either his cousin or his next of kin so that they will release and transfer the fund left in their custody to them.

Ever since, I have made several attempts to locate any of his cousins or next of kin so that they will come forward to put in claims to the said fund but unfortunately, I discovered that in all his files with my chambers and at the bank, he never mentioned having any relatives except his only late wife and daughter.

After several and unsuccessful attempts to trace any of his relatives, I decided to track his last name over the internet in search of his cousins hence I contacted you. One fact remains clear, that anybody I present to the bank as his next of kin, shall inherit the fund and it is based on this fact that I ask you to get back to me immediately so that we both will discuss on terms of partnership in this issue so that I will forward your name to the bank as his legiitimate next of kin and beneficiary to the fund .

Be advised that this transaction is 100% risk-free as this transaction will remain sealed for life at the conclusion which will not take more than five banking days. I want you to know that I never master minded the death of the deceased fellow. Please visit this website: http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9802/16/taiwan.crash.update2/

For your information, being a Tawanees or not will not pose any problem for the successful transfer of this fund to your account.

I await your immediate response so that I will give you a more detail information as regards to this transaction.

Earlier this week I made a rare trek to the multiplex to see Serenity, a pretty-good-but-not-quite-great SF movie based on a shortlived TV show I liked. There were only ten people in the audience, yet they still managed to annoy me.

One woman kept cramming popcorn into her mouth and then coughing. Chomp chomp, cough cough. Chomp chomp, cough cough. I wanted to shake her and say, "Don't you realize the popcorn is making you cough?!" She had a big bag of popcorn and continued this ritual throughout the two-hour movie. An old man kept getting up to use the toilet, and he did not walk fast, so I got to watch his crabwalking silhouette in front of the movie screen every time. Then there was the mummified old lady in a wheelchair, who was wheeled in by her nurse/companion before the movie started. As the pair enter, there's a slide on the movie screen showing an ad for a soft drink. The old lady looks at it and asks loudly, "What's the name of this movie -- Coca-Cola?" Right then I knew she was trouble. Of course she talked loudly during the whole film, bewildered by everything that happened.

Add to this the kids coming and going throughout the movie, the glare on the screen from dim overlight heads, the lengthy commercials played at the start of the show, the endless previews for movies I couldn't care less about (Aeon Flux? Doom? Legend of Zorro?), and the hassle of fighting stop-and-go traffic on the way to the theater and then on the way home ... and now I remember why it's been three years since I last went to the movies.

Maybe in three more years I'll give it another go.

Serenity itself featured snappy dialogue, great special effects, and a lot of entertaining moments, but suffered from its TV origins. Too many characters to keep track of, and the story starts too fast and doesn't give you time to adjust to the strange new world 500 years in the future. The logic and logistics of the climax are a bit confusing, and the payoff feels kind of small for a feature film. It's doing only modest box office. Fans like me will see it; others may give it a pass, or just wait for the DVD.

Frankly, waiting for the DVD sounds like a pretty good plan these days.